"EY oop there, chuck! A silver saucer hovers in the sky at a Lancashire hotspot for alien craft.

This is the 44th strange sighting since 1977 in an area dubbed "UFO Valley".

And the sleepy pocket of Lancs - best known for giving the world legendary actress Dame Thora Hird - has now clocked up the highest number of close encounters in the country. The latest sighting in the Bacup and Rossendale area was made by Aron Sacks.

The carpenter snapped the mysterious object from his window on a mobile phone.

Yesterday he told how it hovered for less than a minute, before silently zooming off at high speed.

Aron, 34, added: "It was amazing - certainly not a normal aircraft. I grabbed my phone, took one photo - then when I looked back it had gone. There was no sound, nothing. It's very haunting to think I've seen a UFO."

But sightings run in the family - with Aron's dad Mike, 69, spotting THREE UFOs near their home in the village of Stackstead.

Former tailor Mike said: "The first in 1978 looked like the one Aron saw.

"It was oval, about 600ft up and doing 80mph. I thought, 'Blimey, what the blooming heck is that?'" Four others also spotted it and cops investigated. Mike added: "This is UFO Valley. Aliens might be looking for water or materials in the stone quarries.""[/size]